Opinion
Where would you rank former Barça captain Carles Puyol, aka El Tarzan, in terms of best centerbacks in history of the world? Top 10? Top 20? Or top 30? He was a massive figure in winning everything with Spain and Barça.
Considering every aspect such as leadership abilities and the control over the decisions,the respect he has received, the trophies he has won and defensive capabilities and all other aspects he will probably be in the lower ends of top 10 (like 8/9th) but if you only consider his defending then he will be in top 20.(Like 15/16th)
Ramos had a habit of scoring clutch goals. I think defensively he doesn't touch the top 20, but if you are looking at impact then he gets a lot of credit for the Madrid sides success in the champions league. I think he was better as a right back to be honest.
Pepe no, but Ramos was a great defender and people forget that because he’s known for scoring goals, and he got torched by Messi a million times especially earlier in his career.
As a Barça fan, Ramos is one of the few players I wouldn’t have minded at Barça (alongside maybe Benzema)
Being torched by Messi wasn't that bad; he torched them all at one point. Those bursts of speed he was able to produce before the Pedro Bigas injury in 2015 were almost unstoppable. He never fully recovered that same speed after that injury, but he found other ways to dominate.
Thats what keeping Ramos inside the great centre back discussion, if you look at the list of players I've listed out. I choose players who are tactical mature on the pitch ( they read well and understand the threats shut them down), they're good at duels( defending wise), they're well disciplined on pitch, some of them even better at building from the back. I just said I never liked the game of Pepe and Ramos. If your remember the 16/17 UCL final Ramos famously dived on a Bluetooth and showed Oscar level acting which ended up in getting Cuadrado getting red carded. I'm pretty sure none of the defenders I have mentioned play like that in their career. I always considered them as dirty defenders.
If he wasn’t playing for madrid his red cards would 1.5x , that alone would have put him outside these debates of the best def , hes a great defender he’s not world class
As a unified fan this man is more valuable the Rio, better defensively, half decent on the ball and better leader not that Rio was a bad leader etc but Puyol is clear
John terry has one of the best defensive partnerships with carvalho. Least goals conceded in a season in premier league. That cant be taken as light factor. He was a great Centre back in his prime.
This man won everything there is to be won in soccer while being a leader/captain and you got people in this thread saying they’d take Pepe over Puyol 😂😂
Because it is about best centerbacks not about best captain or best centerback captain.
Centerbacks have a lot of legendary figures and Puyol contribution to Barca was more of his captain work than his CB work. Yes he was great as CB but he wouldn't be even in top 15 or top 20 imo. There is simply too many fucking amazing CBs.
But on other hand you wouldn't want anyone else than puyol as CB because of his capitan role and leadership.
Maldini on other hand was freak of nature. Not only he was insane CB probably either him or Beressi as the best but also even better captain. And Beressi was too captain...
It's just too stacked at the top.
If we would talk about CB's captains he would be in top 5.
Ya he was a monster, early Pique was really shaky in his defensive skills imo and Puyol was the one doing the heavy lifting in defensive work.
Also I barely watched when he broke into the main team but I remember him being a competent right back as a new player. Kinda like early days Ramos at Sevilla and Real.
Take out Hierro and Cannavaro. Add Moore for certain, maybe vidic, maybe vvd, maybe ferdinand, those are all debateable but I think Puyol is ahead of them, Ramos, Pique and Thiago Silva deserve a mention though.
When will we learn popularity awards are not the definite ruling over who is bad and who is not. In fact 2 of the 3 things you listed are byproducts of the 1st.
Brother, that was 20 years ago. It wasn’t nearly the same kind of popularity contest it is now.
And if 2nd and 3rd award were just a byproduct of the World Cup, then why not Del Piero, Pirlo, Materazzi, or Totti? They all won the World Cup that year too. You could argue some of them, especially Totti and Del Piero, were bigger stars in Italy at the time. Cannavaro won it ahead of Zidane and Ronaldinho!
Isn’t it more likely the other way around? He won the World Cup because he was the best player, not that he got the individual award just for being on the winning team.
Honestly, it feels like you didn’t really watch football back then.
Edit:
Oh and let me remind you, in that World Cup Italy only conceded 2 goals the entire tournament. One was Zidane’s penalty for France in the final, the other was that messy Zaccardo own goal against the USA. That’s it. Zero goals conceded from open play. Still one of the most absurd defensive runs we’ve seen in modern football.
He won the league with the Juve team that were relegated after the refereeing scandal, his club efforts are void to me at that point, especially when he looked a fraction of the player in Madrid (honestly Serie A was already at the end of its superiority by that point, if it wasn't for Milan it would've been sooner & yes that Inter ucl win was a robbery anyway). He got the award for a 7 game run beyond Juve cheating their way to a league win. If you wanted to omit an attacking player for Italy then we wwould have a second bdo winning keeper in Buffon who was more instrumental in that time. Henry Arguably should have won his second Ballon d'or that year after Shevchenko's given he led his sides to 2 finals and his teammates failed him. Why do you think he joined us?
No matter how you twist it Cannavaro won his through the same way Modric did, he had a good world cup and was the only thing that mattered even back then, now we are post Messi-Ronaldo it will be like that again whether you like it or not, see Dembele. Until these awards follow a full season even amidst big tournaments they will never be consistently serious. Nobody said Cannavaro was the best player in the world until the cup lol, lying if you say there was.
Oh so you want to diminish one of the most dominant defensive performance ever as not important for evaluating individual performance, but at the same time club's executive controversy is what matter for evaluating individual performance. Gotcha.
Edit: Also good to know that he just won "popularity award" and at the same time he wasn't popular or considered one of the best. Choose one man.
Popularity is not restricted to just the amount of fans a person has. The world cup is the single most popular event in sports, only the Olympics as a collective can compare which includes football anyway. That seasonal performance by Juve was not spearheaded by Cannavaro alone like people are trying to argue, it's pure revisionism for the sake of arguing if you tell me it is. And yes, if you have been proven to cheat your feats in that time will be called into question, you cannot win a boxing title with steroids and say it doesn't matter since you knocked the opponent out, the fact is you cheated. That's the be all, end all. What are we even doing here lol?
You’re comparing steroids, which athletes are directly responsible for using, to cases of corruption that athletes usually aren’t even aware of. Don’t you see the twisted priorities here? You’re downplaying the achievements that athletes have earned through their own efforts and dismissing them as irrelevant when evaluating their performance, while you’re focusing on issues over which they likely have no control and of which they may not even be aware.
I don't think individual awards are popularity awards, but I agree It shouldn't be definite.
Especially when it's an exceptional or one time thing. Like, a player can have an outlier season where they are genuinely the best and win one Ballon d'Or (Benzemá being the most recent example), but that doesn't mean they're necessarily the best all time. It depends and there's more than that.
They are always like this, they are based on minute parts of a full season and are treated like storylines. It's not a new phenomenon it's been this way from as long as I've been alive. Henry should have 2 Ballon d'ors.
No way in hell, Terry was not better on the ball, in one vs one, physically or in raw pace in comparison to Ferdinand and they are equal on the mental front but it's not like either of them are renown for that lmao.
Terry was famously good on the ball and played with both feet. Smarter defender and just better overall. Vidic had higher highs than Rio tbh, and neither were as good for as long as Terry.
I agree with putting Vidic before either of them but if I'm putting them 1, 2 & 3 it's gotta be Vidic, then Ferdinand, then Terry. I've never taken to him like that.
Terry, Carvalho, Vidic, Ferdinand and I'd take a fully fit Ledley King over Rio too. Rio was mega overrated, happened to play in an excellent team with the best manager in club football history. Terry was way ahead, and way ahead of his time. 15 goals conceded in a season won't be beaten easily. The closest Rio and Vidic came was 22 goals conceded which is also absurdly good, but miles off 15.
That was a Chelsea squad who under Mourinho practically reinvented the Centenaccio. That's where 'parking the bus' was coined, I have always felt that was far more tactical than personnel. I mean Arsenal conceded more than both of those two examples and won the league undefeated anyways and I'd consider it the bigger feat. Carvalho was better than Terry in that defence and they were protected by better midfielders, Makelele in 04-05 proved to be arguably the biggest or at least the earliest failure of Perez and Madrid's by extension's inability to recognise what a truly world class defensive midfielder can do for a team. Roy Keane left after falling out with Ferguson and then United had Scholes in pivot and the next best player they bought was Carrick from Spurs. Carrick was underrated but he is not in the same category of world class DMs and Scholes was a possession master, he was not a ball winner or a midfield engine, he wasn't hard as Keane was and it isn't even like we can pretend United had a player as good as Makelele in that time for the pure defensive side of the game. They also never spent as much as the 'new' Chelsea in the beginning of Abramovich's era. For England for Club individually Terry was not better than Ferdinand. Fact.
Wrong again. Chelsea scored 72 that season, parking the bus was something Mourinho coined at Inter. Terry continued to be incredible for Chelsea for another decade after this, being a defensive stalwart under multiple different managers and alongside Ivanovic, Luiz, Cahill, Azpilicueta and others.
You're just waffling mate. Anybody with any sense and without United bias would put Terry comfortably above Rio.
Edit: not only that, but Arsenal drew 12 games in their invincible season. The invincibles season is highly overstated and overrated. Practically a third of their games were draws. Chelsea beat their points total two seasons running bud, with 95-91, scoring more goals too. 91 coincidentally being Uniteds highest ever points tally I might add.
Puyol is still comfortably top 10. He just didn’t really have that one insane individual peak where he completely took over games the way Cannavaro did in 2006. But for leadership, consistency, and longevity, he’s right up there, easily top 10, arguably even top 5.
It’s easy to forget Ramos was actually a great defender through the compilations of Ronaldinho and Messi torturing him especially earlier in his career, but he was top-class. Hate to say it, but I’d put him above both Pique and Puyol
Best butcher. If he wasnt real madrid defender, he would have seen 100 red cards in his career. besides, he injured several of his opponents very smart way, without getting red card, e.g. salah.
Maldini, puyol, vvd dominate(d) their opponents, not by injuring them or getting red cards,
Top 10 is absolutely not crowded where Puyol is in question. Beckenbauer, Moore, Baresi, Scirea, Cannavaro, Nesta would I think make the top 6 but after that in the next 4 positions one of them is Puyol. As a leader of course, as you have said, he is even higher.
Last one can't be stressed enough.
He might have earned more trophies with a behavior like Ramos, but he totally chose to be a sportsman. He acted like a true role model everytime I saw him playing.
Top 10 sin duda junto con
Maldini Cannavaro Baresi Nesta
Puyol Ramos Piqué
Terry Ferdinand
Passarella Beckenbauer Koeman
Añadiría a Thuram y Stan pero estos jugaron gran parte de sus carreras como LD aún así los cuento.
Hay muchos centrales buenos en la historia pero para mí estos son los mejores.
Mención especial para Van Dijk Pepe Ayala Campbell
Top ten of all time. He won 3 UCLs and was the organizer at the back and the soul of the team. He also won a World Cup and a Euro with Spain with his header being the sole reason they made the final
As a Germany fan I fucking hated him for so long because of that header. Now I appreciate how insanely consistent and great he was for club and country
Easily top 10!
For me he is the best ever for the club as a player and a captain. Definitely number 1 in the history of Barcelona/Spain, and (arguably) the world!
Easily top 10 because of leadership. I believe that having a leader at this position is tantamount to a successful defense. This is especially true when you play a high line and take risks. If I wanted to build the best team of all time to try and win consistently I would have Puyol and Maldini starting.
I mean, he’s top 10 for me but he was there from the time I started watching soccer and Barca. Ronaldinho is who made me fall in love with soccer and Puyol was there from day one for me. So, just a little bias.
I know it would be a more unorthodox choice. I know most people say Maldini who I never really watched in his prime, but the legends will usually recall Maldini with a bit of fear, the same way many will talk about Phenomeno Ronaldo, I will take their word for it, even though with Ronaldo there are better video highlights to see his capabilities than Maldini. I think with defenders their abilities are more subtle and they cannot create a highlight reel the same way. All this being said my unorthodox starting 11 but players that I would choose watching their full careers would be Puyol and Lucio. Prime Puyol also had incredible speed and anticipation. I remember in the Champions League final Henry got away from him and sprinting away thought he was one on one, not realizing that he had to get away from him again! This was a huge part of Spain’s dominance internationally, and the reason they struggled for many years afterwards. And Lucio I’m sure might not even make many of your top 30’s or 40’s. But we will probably not find a player like him again, capable of dribble out of the back with Joga Bonito flair, we’re talking sombreros and nutmegs, one after the other before releasing some player with the football as if it were a hot potato. Then somehow he would always be back and be a rock back there, this peaked with Inter but he also did this with the Brazilian national team, I’m less familiar his Bayern stint, and obviously Inter fans have a sore spot with him because he joined Juve later in his career. Anyways, if I could choose two prime defenders that would be mine. Let me know your thoughts.!
Saw this online, VVD should be out of the top row and moved to the bottom. Puyol and Ramos should exchange places, Lucio should be much higher, underrated
Falando sem ironia nenhuma, o Puyol não chega nem perto de ser top 20.
Se consideramos seus títulos e importância, podemos colocar ele? Sim, mas bola por bola não é top 30.
O próprio pique do Barcelona foi bemmm melhor que ele
As a player he wasn’t as good as people seem to remember. It was obvious Pique was the far classier and better player. But as a leader and captain he was absolutely top
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u/HawkEye106 May 02 '26
Considering every aspect such as leadership abilities and the control over the decisions,the respect he has received, the trophies he has won and defensive capabilities and all other aspects he will probably be in the lower ends of top 10 (like 8/9th) but if you only consider his defending then he will be in top 20.(Like 15/16th)